Victim of Uncharity

At any given point of time there are at least 50,000 children in India who are in need of homes. But only 800 to 1,000 are adopted each year. Indians are not unwilling to adopt. What deters them however, is the notoriously complex process that is riddled with archaic views about who is fit to be a parent. These rules and the inordinate delay in eventually being handed a child is there to ensure that no trafficking takes place. But it also lends room for personal biases and very often capable individuals are denied parenthood because they don’t fit the image of the ‘ideal parent’. According to Maneka Gandhi, the Women and Child Development Minister, in the last few years, several Indian-origin parents have settled abroad, especially in China, just to adopt babies.

To promote adoptions in the country, the Central Government earlier this year introduced new regulations. It made it compulsory for all prospective parents to register with a central agency, thereby streamlining the process; established a fully automated online system, making it impossible for individual adoption agencies to reject any prospective parent without good reason; and, interestingly, described an eligible adoptive parent as someone ‘irrespective of his marital status and whether or not he has his own biological son or daughter.’ The government showed open-mindedness in allowing single parents the right to adopt through the new guidelines, effectively giving single parent families the same status as the conventional two parent families.

But there has been some extraordinary opposition to the new rules. Like the protest by the administrators of India’s most famous and largest orphanage, Missionaries of Charity (which was founded by Mother Teresa and currently runs 16 orphanages). Endorsed by Catholic groups like the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, the organisation has, in opposition to the new rules, threatened to shut down their operations.

Their main complaint is single people being given the right to adopt. One nun from the oganisation told a reporter, “What if the single parent who we give our baby to turns out to be gay or lesbian? What security or moral upbringing will these children get? Our rules only allow married couples to adopt.” Another nun told a journalist, “It is not a religious rule but a human rule. Children need both parents, male and female. That is only natural, isn’t it?” By putting religious dogma ahead of child welfare, the much-respected organisation has felled its own reputation.

The concept of single parenthood is not as unusual as it might have been in the past. India is rapidly changing. Divorce rates are going up. Several people are forgoing marriages to pursue their careers and interests. Some single women are undergoing assisted reproduction treatment to have children. Parenthood— either adoptive, through birth, or with the help of assisted reproduction treatment — doesn’t necessarily require a marriage anymore. It is this—the fear that many more will realise the needlessness of marriage to start a family—that lurks in the heart of the critiques of the new adoption guidelines.

There are several instances of successful single parents in India. Actress Sushmita Sen, for instance, adopted a child when her career was at its peak. She was just 25 then and had to go to court before she was found eligible to become a parent.

In the modern world, where marital relationships can often be fractious, divorced men and women ably bring up children with the support of relatives. To assume that unmarried singles are somehow going against a divine will is absurd.

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